


We'll Go Slow And High Tempo

by LayALioness



Series: Find Your Dream [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: First Time, mer!bellamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 11:08:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6114616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke panics and calls Raven on a Sunday.</p><p>“How do I have sex with Bellamy?” she asks, voice a high pitched whisper because her parents are still downstairs making breakfast. Honestly, it’s early enough that she was betting on just hitting voicemail, while Raven slept oblivious among her collection of puffy green duvets and stray lego’s.</p><p>“What the fuck,” Raven says, groggy and mad. “Griffin?”</p><p>“No, the other girl you know who wants to have sex with Bellamy,” Clarke deadpans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Go Slow And High Tempo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enoughtotemptme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enoughtotemptme/gifts).



> for julia, who requested some mer!bellamy (:

Clarke panics and calls Raven on a Sunday.

“How do I have sex with Bellamy?” she asks, voice a high pitched whisper because her parents are still downstairs making breakfast. Honestly, it’s early enough that she was betting on just hitting voicemail, while Raven slept oblivious among her collection of puffy green duvets and stray lego’s.

“What the fuck,” Raven says, groggy and mad. “Griffin?”

“No, the other girl you know who wants to have sex with Bellamy,” Clarke deadpans, but Raven turns thoughtful.

“Clarke have you _seen_ your boyfriend? Everyone in town wants to fuck him.”

Clarke rolls over to press her grin into her pillow. Bellamy _is_ pretty popular. He works with Anya and Lincoln at the library these days, and lives in the loft above Lincoln’s garage, along with Octavia. She keeps moving her things into the main house while Bellamy’s at work, but he just moves it all back when he comes home, and whines about it a lot. Honestly, Clarke thinks he’s being a little dramatic; Lincoln and Octavia are in fairytale love. The least he can do is let her keep her underwear in her boyfriend’s dresser.

“Good point. But how?”

There’s a long pause and Clarke regrets her words instantly. Finally, Raven speaks slowly, drawing out each word. “Clarke, babe, do we need to have—the _talk_?”

Clarke frowns into her pillow, making a face at her phone that Raven can’t see. “ _No_ , I just,” she makes a noise of annoyance. “I’ve never had sex before, and I don’t know if Bell has, but what if it’s different? You know, as a human?”

“You mean what if he’s too used to fish sex?” Raven asks, but not like she’s making fun of her, which is what Clarke was expecting, to be honest. More like she’s just trying to clarify. She sounds remarkably coherent for eight AM.

“Yes,” Clarke sighs. “What if it’s too weird?”

“Well, what’s fish sex like?”

Clarke pauses, trying to remember if they’d covered that in her ninth grade biology class. Most of what she remembers involves coloring the diagrams they had to make, because that was really the only thing she was good at. “I have no idea. Let’s find out.”

She puts Raven on speaker and grabs her laptop, humming pleasantly on her comforter a few feet away, and googles _fish sex_ , clicking _I feel lucky._

The regret is immediate.

“Oh my god,” Raven says over the phone, voice a little grainy from the static. Clarke’s pretty sure she’s watching the same video. “It’s like I can’t look away.”

“Is it… _raping_ her?” Clarke asks with a grimace. She knows Bellamy would never, but—what if that’s what he’s used to seeing? What if that’s what he thinks sex is supposed to be?

She tries to picture him shoving into her side repeatedly, flopping up against her even as she tries to get away.

“I think it’s just mounting her,” Raven says, but she sounds just as bewildered. “Ugh, nature’s gross. This is why we stick to technology, Clarke.”

“If we stick to technology, how will we have sex?”

“Uh, vibrators. God, Clarke, get your head out of your ass.”

Clarke rolls her eyes enormously. It’s almost a shame Raven can’t see it. “Oh right, of course. _Anyway_ —any tips for the _real_ sex I’m going to have with my _real_ boyfriend?”

“Use a condom,” she says immediately, firm and serious. “Chlamydia kills, Clarke.”

Clarke makes a face. “That sounds untrue. You do realize my mom is a doctor?”

“Yeah, but you suck at biology. I had like a fifty-fifty shot.”

“Your face sucks at biology,” Clarke shoots back, because she’s the mature one. “Thanks for _nothing_.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” Raven chirps. “Good luck with the fish sex!” Then she hangs up.

The thing is, Clarke’s not actually too worried about the _sex_ part of it. She’s been in love with Bellamy Blake for nearly a year, now, and she knows he loves her, knows he’d marry her tomorrow if she asked him to, and if she got her parents’ legal consent. She’s actually kind of looking forward to this—she’s had the general sort of experience with her hands, and she’s heard about multiple orgasms, which sound _awesome_. She and Bellamy have nearly reached that brink a few times, making out with her thighs bracketing his hips, and him thrusting up every few breaths without really meaning to.

But he always catches himself eventually, holding his breath and pulling back until they’ve both calmed down. He’ll give a shaky smile that warms her to her toes, and press his lips against her hairline, and turn her around in his lap before asking how her day was. Like she can think about _anything at all_ , when she’s pressed up against him, with his breath warm on her neck. It’s a little inconsiderate of him, to be honest.

It makes her think that _he’s_ nervous about it, which in turn makes her nervous, because—what if it really _is_ too different? What if neither of them know what they’re doing and it’s _awful_ and they learn they’re not sexually compatible at all? Sexual compatibility is important in a relationship; all the Oprah magazines say so. Clarke doesn’t usually put much stock in romantic advice from _Cosmo Girl_ , but Oprah probably wouldn’t lie.

She dresses quickly enough—it’s still early so she knows Bellamy’s at the beach, soaking in the saltwater before his shift at the library. He tries to go every day, but she knows it’s not really enough. He’s homesick.

She’s seen him fall asleep floating on his back in the shallows, and she’s always a little bit jealous, because he never seems to sink or get any water up his nose. It’s like the ocean remembers him, even if he’s a little different now.

Her dad’s making blueberry waffles when she comes downstairs, and her mom’s fighting with the Keurig, because she’s stubborn and refuses to replace it until it actually explodes.

“I’m hanging out with Bellamy today,” Clarke says, because she doesn’t see the point in lying. Besides, it’s not like they know what she’s planning to do _while_ hanging out with him.

Plus, they’ve known Bellamy for a while now, and they like him. Clarke knows they like him, of course, but. It still sends a happy little buzz of warmth down her chest, to be reminded.

“Will you be back for dinner?” her father asks, wincing when he burns a finger on the waffle iron. “Will _he_ be here for dinner? If so, I’ll need to make something vegan.”

Clarke ducks down to hide her grin, but it’s no use. “You know he’ll eat anything you make,” she reminds him, snatching up one of the finished waffles he’s stacked off to the side. She starts nibbling at it, plain. He always makes them with extra butter, so they leave her fingertips shiny and wet.

“I’ll text you to let you know,” she decides, pecking him on the cheek before turning to smack one to her mother’s, still frowning at the Keurig, like she’s hoping to glare it into submission. Honestly, it’s probably her best bet.

Clarke faces two different dilemmas on her way to the beach to collect her mermaid boyfriend—because he still identifies as mermaid, with or without the gills and tail, and Clarke isn’t about to argue. She gets to call her boyfriend a _mermaid_ —the first is condoms. She stops by a CVS along the way, but there’s an entire aisle filled with boxes and boxes of different brands and sizes to choose from, and she has no idea where to start. She’s never seen Bellamy’s dick before; she doesn’t know what size it is. It _feels_ big enough, when they get carried away and she feels it through the starch of his salt-encrusted swim trunks, or the denim of his jeans. She decides to play it safe and buy the one-size-fits-all box, and hope he doesn’t have some sort of magical mermaid mega-penis. Like Aquaman, or something.

The second dilemma is deciding where they should _go_.

They can’t go back to Clarke’s house, since her parents will be home all day, and even if they weren’t, her grandma would be. Even if all she does is mostly sleep and snore like a chainsaw in the huge queen-sized bed, it would be just Clarke’s luck for her to wake up to the springs of her childhood mattress.

They _might_ be able to go to the loft, but Octavia lives there too, and Clarke’s pretty sure she wouldn’t appreciate having to hear her brother have sex with his girlfriend in the next room over.

That leaves—where? The handicapped stall at the library? Clarke knows a few girls from her school who have hooked up in there, and she maybe isn’t opposed to trying it out in the future, but.

She’s not a _romantic_ , but somehow the idea of a public restroom as the place to lose her virginity just does not appeal.

Clarke’s still wrestling with the thought when she finally reaches the beach, slipping her sneakers off before crossing the sand, just hot enough to sting the soles of her feet. It’s a Sunday morning in April, so there’s hardly anyone out, and she spots Bellamy right away, a drifting blur of brown skin and dark hair, eyes closed and on his back in the water. Clarke tosses her shoes and shopping bag down, and then lets out a wolf whistle.

Bellamy’s mouth slides into a slow smile and he cracks open an eye, squinting up at her. “You’re up early,” he says, sitting up. He shakes his hair like a dog, scattering water as he walks up out of the surf.

Clarke digs her toes into the sand, wiggling them a little. She’d painted them a bright shiny pink the night before, and they catch the sun now. “You’re out late,” she shoots back, dancing a few feet away when he starts to get closer, still dripping. “Your shift starts soon.”

“I should probably dry off, then.”

Bellamy’s grin turns wicked, and she knows what’s about to happen right before it does—but she’s never been faster than him, and it’s _hard_ to run on sand, so she can only scream when he lunges and pulls her in against his soaking wet chest.

He starts wiping his wet hair against her face, her hair, her shoulder and neck, anywhere he can reach, laughing into her skin as she tries to get away.

“Bellamy Blake, I am not your towel!”

“You’re the most misbehaving towel I’ve ever met,” he agrees, setting her back down on the sand. But he doesn’t let go of her, arms leaving trails of water down the back and front of her shirt. Clarke tips her head back to frown up at him.

“Where are your clothes?”

He beams down at her, the way he always does—like she’s the best part of his day. It still makes her breath catch, even eight months later. He still makes her heart stutter when they kiss.

“Who says I brought any?”

She raises a brow. “You realize you have work in like ten minutes, right?”

Bellamy makes a face, and she grins. He loves his job really; he gets to hang out around books all day. He just doesn’t care for the hours.

Her mermaid boyfriend is a bit of an insomniac, as it turns out. Apparently in the ocean, mermaids are nocturnal.

“Why wouldn’t we be?” he’d asked, genuinely confused when she wondered.

“How did you see?”

He’d shrugged. “Our eyes are better underwater. Besides, it was too deep to see the sun anyway, so daylight didn’t matter.”

Now, she reaches up to thumb at the skin beneath his eyes, just a shade darker than the rest of him. “How late did you stay up last night?” she asks, getting ready to scold him. He grins, turning to kiss her palm where it’s settled on his cheekbone.

“Not late,” he says, and she doesn’t believe him for a second. He probably stayed up all night, reading in the bathtub, the dork.

“Liar,” she frowns, and he leans down to kiss her.

He kisses like he always has, and her heart pauses and then restarts. The kiss is long, and wet, and deep—and he always tastes a bit like salt, but not like ocean water. More like ocean air. When he pulls away he brushes the wet arch of his nose against her cheek, leaving a trail on her skin.

“Are you coming with me?” he asks, pulling back, reaching for a pile of cotton she hadn’t noticed before, lying wrinkled on the sand. He tugs on his shirt—a bright red one that says _Cardinals_ in black letters—and she’s a little disappointed to see his abs disappear beneath it. He has really nice abs. As far as she’s concerned, he should be an exception to the whole no-shirt-no-sale policy everywhere he goes.

“Did you want me to?” She watches him tug his pants on over his swim trunks, and he flashes her a smile.

“Always.”

“Then I’ll come,” she shrugs, like she _hadn’t_ been planning to, anyway. She usually hangs out at the library while he works, if Raven is busy. She’ll spend her time reading the books on the return cart, because she feels bad for them. Sometimes if she’s feeling responsible enough, she’ll try studying for the SAT.

“Good,” he takes her hand, and they head towards the main street. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you, though. Anya said some of the romances have been going missing.”

“The romances,” Clarke repeats, skeptical. She has nothing against romance, as a genre; she’s just never been very interested in _reading_ it.

Bellamy nods, apparently serious. “The sex kind,” he adds, and she nearly trips.

“Yeah, that’s uh—definitely not me,” she manages to choke out, not at all convincing. Bellamy glances at her, confused, and if he wasn’t suspicious of her before, he clearly was now.

“Hm,” he hums, and she can tell he doesn’t believe her.

“I’m serious!”

“So am I,” he agrees. “Some of it was _dragon sex_ , Clarke. I’ll do my best not to judge, but…” He trails off, and she hits him in the shoulder.

Clarke and Lincoln did their best to teach their respective mermaids the English language within their first few months in town, and for the most part, they were quick studies, and it came easily to them.

But there are still a few words Bellamy struggles with, and it’s always fun and a little bit gratifying, when he comes up to her for a translation, or asks what a certain book is about. Usually they’re just boring medical encyclopedias, or bird-watching field guides, but sometimes it’ll be a really good one.

“ _Bearillionaire_ ,” Clarke reads out for him, but Bellamy’s frown just deepens. He has to squint to see things this close, and she thinks he might need glasses above the water. “It’s about a billionaire who can shapeshift into a bear, apparently.” Honestly, she almost wants to read it, just for that. “He seduces some girl in a mountain lodge.”

“ _Bearillionaire_ ,” Bellamy repeats with a scoff, snatching the book up to put away and probably try to wipe from his memory. “That’s probably not even a real word.”

“I don’t know,” Clarke muses. “All words are made up, if you think about it.” Bellamy shoots her a scowl too, for good measure.

It’s relatively easy to forget about the whole sex thing, when Clarke finds a book to settle down in one of the purple beanbags with. It’s a young adult novel, about fairies because there aren’t any about mermaids—she’s looked. Well, except for _A Little Mermaid_ , which is frankly too depressing.

She’s about three quarters of the way through it when Bellamy comes to fetch her. It’s Sunday, which means he only works a half shift, so it’s still early afternoon. Typically, they’d go get a late lunch at the raw-vegan diner down the street, or go bowling or something. Maybe go back to his loft to play old video games on Lincoln’s ancient nineteen eighties console. Maybe go to her house instead, where he’d successfully win over her parents, and they’d fight over the crossword puzzle.

But today she has different plans.

“So, what now?” Bellamy asks, sinking down into the chair beside her, running a hand through her hair. It’s still damp around the edges, curling every which way and that from the humidity. He’s still lovely.

Clarke isn’t completely sure where the idea of the pier comes from—she hasn’t been to that side of the beach since she was young, her seventh birthday party. She’d slipped on the rocks and sliced her knee open, and had refused to go back, after that. It was like the little bit of coast had betrayed her.

“I have an idea,” she tells him, standing up. He just shrugs and follows, as always.

He also always, _always_ asks questions.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a secret.”

“What are we doing there?”

“Also a secret.”

“When will we get there?”

“You’ll see.”

Bellamy sighs dramatically, lacing their fingers together as they walk, with Clarke in the lead. She can tell he’s surprised when she cuts through the usual path to the open public beach, and instead takes him through the trees, towards the western most end.

The pier is still there, but it’s nothing like Clarke remembers. She remembers rocks, gray and white and brown, all the most boring colors in the universe. And rocks the size of her head, of her hands, of her toenails, carpeting the sand and making it tricky to walk on, like every move is an obstacle course in itself.

But instead, the sand is smooth and hard-packed, by the high tide. The water rolls farther in here than she’s used to, but she sort of likes that. She likes how separated it is from the rest of the beach, from the rest of everything. Bellamy holds her hand a little bit tighter as he looks out at it, taking in the ocean, the pier, the sand untouched or walked on.

“It’s beautiful,” he breathes, and she tugs him towards the dock, stretching out like a road of long wooden planks, dyed near-black by the water. Right now though, the tide is low, so there’s a good bit of space between the bottom of the dock and the ground. This is where she wants to plant her flag. Bellamy, of course, doesn’t.

At this point, she’s fairly sure he’s just trying to be obstinate.

“What is under here?” Bellamy demands, checking the sides of the room for any perceivable threats. Except that’s a little difficult, seeing as the space is open, with no walls to speak of.

Clarke’s taken to carrying her smallest beach bag around whenever she goes to visit Bellamy. It has a green sponge-print pear on the front, and she keeps it stocked with towels and sunscreen, both of which Bellamy notoriously forgets. Now, she reaches in and takes out a long towel, magenta with the _Barbie_ logo in faded letters across the top, and then tugs Bellamy down to sit beside her on it.

He seems amused. “You know we could have just sat down, right? I don’t _have_ to keep my clothes clean.”

Clarke shakes her head, scowling down at the muddy grains of sand beneath the towel. She’s not its biggest fan, and who _knows_ where it might end up, when her pants are off? The towel seemed like a good idea.

“We could have,” she agrees, licking her lips a little. She watches his eyes track the movement of her tongue, going dark at the sight of it. “If we were planning to just sit.”

Bellamy leans in to brush his mouth along her neck, and Clarke moans a little, tipping her head back to give him more room. “What else did you have in mind?”

His voice is low, like syrup slick down her skin, and Clarke shivers into him as his mouth opens, grazing his teeth _just_ _barely_ against her.

This would be the moment to tell him something sultry from those _Cosmo Girl_ ’s Octavia keeps under her bed, to go through with Clarke and Raven while Bellamy’s still at work. But Clarke can barely even _think_ with the feel of him on her, and her brain is already so wired and frazzled, from adrenaline and nerves.

“I want to have sex with you, but only if it’s not too weird,” she blurts, and Bellamy pauses where he’s trailing kisses across her shoulder. He pulls back just a little, to eye her up and down.

“What?”

Clarke takes a breath, and then another, and then melts again when he starts rubbing his thumb against her arm, soothing. “I want—did you—I don’t know how—” she cuts herself off with a scowl. “I _want_ you,” she says, firm, reaching for him. “I want _you_ , but, uh. I don’t know if you--?”

“Clarke,” Bellamy says, and then seems to think better of it, and just kisses her instead, tugging her into his lap. “I will _always_ want you,” he says into her mouth, and Clarke grins, nipping at the tip of his tongue.

“That’s nice to hear, but not what I was saying,” she teases, running her hands through his hair. It’s wet enough to stick to her skin, and she tugs it a little, making him whimper. She loves the little noises he makes. She wants to see if he has any more. “I just meant—I don’t really know how mermaids— _do_ this.”

To her immediate gratification, Bellamy starts to turn pink. “We, uh, don’t,” he admits. “We only have sex with humans. It’s—we can’t be with our own kind.”

“You _can’t_?” Clarke pushes, curious now. “Like, _ever_? What if you really love each other? Why not?”

Bellamy smiles, amused, brushing her hair back. “We don’t, not really. We’re solitary. Before my mom died, she and O were the only other mermaids I knew. And then after, it was just me and O.”

Clarke frowns. “That sounds lonely.”

“It was,” Bellamy shrugs, clearly having come to terms with it. His smile widens, and he pulls her in closer, to slot right up against him. She can feel him, hard against her thigh, and she bites her lip in spite of herself. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he grins. “I’m not lonely anymore.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he leans in, and this kiss is softer than the others, and lighter. Just a reminder. “I have you, right?”

“You have me,” she agrees. “So, did you…?” She grinds down a little, in explanation, and Bellamy surges up to kiss her again, the way she likes best.

“ _Yes_ ,” he groans, peeling her tank top away, unsnapping her bra in a second. His hands are smooth and practiced—they’ve gone this far before, his mouth on her breasts, tongue driving her crazy. But he hesitates at her shorts, at the pink band of her underwear.

“It’s okay,” Clarke whispers, guiding his hand down inside them, and he brushes the backs of his knuckles against her cunt, and he whines into her mouth.

“You’re so soft,” he hisses, and Clarke whimpers. She grabs at his wrist, twisting it, until he gets the message and slides a finger inside. “You’re so _wet_.”

“Condoms,” Clarke pants, flailing wildly towards her tote bag. “In the bag.” But Bellamy ignores her, sliding in and out of her, slow and steady, watching her move against him with dark eyes.

“It a minute,” he decides, and adds a finger. She has to muffle a scream in his neck.

He waits until she’s just a little bit shaky, catching her breath as she comes back down, before reaching for the CVS bag. He takes a moment to study the box, before nodding to himself, like he’s come to a decision.

The realization hits her rather suddenly. “Have you never done this before?”

He pointedly doesn’t look at her as he messes with the condom packet, but the red tips of his ears betray him. “Neither have you,” he points out, defensive, and Clarke’s still breathing a little hard, and grinning too much for the kiss to be very coordinated, but he presses back anyway.

“I’m glad,” she assures him, and she is. She’d been so worried that she would do something wrong, that she wouldn’t be as good as whatever weird fish-sex history he had; it’s a weight off her chest, really. “We can figure it out together. It’s probably not that hard.”

Bellamy grins at her cheekily as he strips off his pants, and then his swim trunks, making her eyes water at the sight of him, so much brown freckled skin and—yep, that’s a penis. She reaches out to stroke it and his hips jerk up into her hand.

“I don’t know,” he says, voice only a little strangled. He bats her hand away so he can slide the condom on. “It looks pretty hard to me.”

Clarke boos the joke, and he laughs, leaning his head against her shoulder so the puffs of warm air land on her skin. “Ready?”

“Definitely,” she says, and he pulls her up and onto him, going slow so she can get used to the feel. “You okay?” he asks, and his voice is _definitely_ strangled now.

Clarke nods, unable to _remember_ words, let alone _speak_ them. “You?”

“I love you.” She starts to move against him, and he helps her find a rhythm that has them both swearing under their breath. “I love you, Clarke, I—” He breaks off to let out a string of words in that strange other language that he and Octavia speak sometimes. It sounds a little bit like a mixture of the whale music tapes her mom listens to, when she wants to destress, and somebody gurgling mouthwash. But he’s hissing it now, which she takes to be a good sign. She’s pretty sure he’s cursing.

“I love you too,” she says, gasps really, and he grips the sides of her hips so hard they might bruise from it.

As it turns out, she was right; multiple orgasms are _awesome_.

“Hey, did you want to come over for dinner?” she asks as they’re getting dressed. She shakes the sand from her shirt in distaste; even with the towel, the stuff still got _everywhere_. She’s pretty sure she’ll be washing the grains from her hair for a _month_.

It was worth it, though.

“My dad can make one of your weird fancy salads,” she adds as extra incentive, and Bellamy comes up to wrap his arms around her from behind.

“I’ll always want to come over,” he says, quiet, and it feels like he means something _more_ , so Clarke brings the back of his hand up to her mouth.

“Good.” She shrugs the tote bag over her shoulder. “Come on.” She picks her way over the sand, towards the street.

Bellamy follows.

 


End file.
